Arcadia England

By Emily Nagel

Like a group of kindergarteners or a herd of cattle, my fellow students and I jolt through the Archway tube station. We feed our cards through machines and stumble onto the shockingly fast and dizzying escalator. I stand on the left, clinging to the handrail and fighting motion sickness as we hurtle through the tunnel. While I’m still trying to adjust to the extreme overstimulation of the unfamiliar, frenzied tube system of London, I hear shouts of, “Stand on the right! The right!” I feel the helpful hands of my new friends, as well as the not-so-forgiving hands of English strangers, guide me to the correct side of the escalator. I would soon realize that this frazzled, confused feeling would be a near-constant of my first week in London.

I was not prepared for the way in which Londoners will scurry through any gap in the flow of traffic on the pavement (I’m still trying to get the hang of British lingo) in order to sprint to their next destination. Or the fact that if you stand too close to the curb (or is it kerb?), your head may come uncomfortably close to being clipped by the mirror of a passing cherry-red double-decker bus. Or that while riding on the second floor of said bus, you will be forced to close your eyes out of fear of witnessing a motorcyclist or bicyclist become roadkill under the bus’s impatient wheels.

What I’m trying to say is that everything here moves fast. Incomprehensibly fast. I find myself adopting the deadpan expression and desperately busy pace of the locals because I know that I will be mowed down if I don’t. I respond to rushed statements of “sorry” with an equally breathless “sorry” and maybe even a “cheers” instead of “that’s okay” so as not to seem rude. I have abandoned my Midwestern tendency of smiling at every single stranger that passes on the street, both because I would wear out my facial muscles if I tried and because the locals don’t return my pleasantries anyway. I have sprinted across the Tower Bridge to an interview while frantically taking pictures and dodging overheated, exhausted families, officially becoming the most efficient tourist in all of London.

I now know that culture shock is very real and that there is no such thing as an English accent because people’s accents seem to change based on what city or even what neighborhood of this lovely country they live in. I have spent several frustrating minutes scanning shop fridges for eggs, only to pass them on the shelf on my way to pay. I am in love with prawn cocktail crisps and the strangely extensive variety of shapes of Cadbury milk chocolate. The brief six days of my time here have been some of the most exciting, overwhelming, exhausting, and liberating days of my life. My classmates and I will continue to look like lost children as we attempt to find our way through our home for the next two months; however, when it is time to leave this intoxicating city, I know that it will have left a permanent mark on each of us.